Shailesh Prakash

WAN-IFRA

Shailesh Prakash

Shailesh Prakash is the Chief Information Officer and Vice President of Digital Product Development at The Washington Post. He is responsible for all aspects of Product Development and Technology, including web, mobile, video, print and advertising. Under his leadership, and in close partnership with the newsroom, The Post has seen tremendous digital growth. The Post’s digital audience hit an all-time high in November 2016, reaching 107 million unique visitors in the U.S. alone. The Post also had the largest mobile audience of any individual news/information site in the US in October 2016.

AdWeek named The Washington Post the “Hottest Digital Publication” in 2016. In 2015, Fast Company magazine named The Washington Post “The World’s Most Innovative Media Company” and Digiday recognized The Post as “Most Innovative Publisher.”

Prakash has also spearheaded the development of Arc Publishing, The Post’s rapidly growing softwareas-as-service business. This state-of-the-art digital platform and suite of tools is engineered to meet the needs of modern publishers and currently serves more than a dozen clients in the U.S. and around the world.

Shailesh has an extensive track record in senior positions spanning multiple industries. He began his career as a software engineer in Silicon Valley moving to positions of increasing responsibility at Sun Microsystems and Netscape and Microsoft where he was a key member of the Bing search engine.

Before coming to The Washington Post in August 2011, he was the Vice President in charge of Technology for Sears Holdings, where he oversaw end-to-end technology functions for sears.com, kmart.com, craftsman.com and kenmore.com, which collectively generate more than $3 billion in annual e-Commerce revenue.

An engineer at heart and by training, Shailesh holds a BS in Computer Science from IIT, Mumbai, a MS in Computer Science from Clemson University, and an MBA from Georgia State University.